Income Gap

CAPE TOWN, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Rising income inequality in the United States and South Africa threatens to tear their societies apart, rocker Bruce Springsteen said on Sunday before his first performance in Africa for almost three decades. Riding high on the global charts with his latest album "High Hopes", the musician stayed true to his New Jersey working class roots and socially conscious lyrics when answering media questions. "There is a tremendous problem...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Most Californians say the wage gap has gotten worse in the most populous U.S. state, but divide along party lines on what to do about it, a new poll shows. The San Francisco-based Field Research poll, released on Wednesday, shows that 54 percent of Californians are dissatisfied with the way wealth is distributed in the state. But, not surprisingly, the views of Democrats and Republicans differ greatly in the role the government should...

By John O'Callaghan MANILA, May 1 (Reuters) - Fe Capco and her five children live in a shack with no running water along a dirt track in eastern Manila. She earns about $100 a month washing clothes and her husband used to bring in about $70 a month driving a motorcycle taxi until he went blind. But things are better than they used to be. Through a programme in the Philippines called Pantawid Pamilya (Family Subsistence), 3 million poor...

By Julien Toyer and Lisa Jucca MADRID/MILAN (Reuters) - When Angel Gomez and Maria Luisa Fernandez retired a decade ago, they imagined spending their pensions largely on restaurant meals, holidays and toys for the grandkids. Today, their retirement money helps to support five families. The Spanish couple, like other relatively prosperous pensioners across southern Europe, are providing an informal safety net which has helped many in the younger generation to...

— Pickup trucks lined a stretch of gravel road where 150 farmers mingled between 7-foot-tall cornstalks and shimmering soybeans to see which of their wealthy brethren would bid on a swath of Iowa's richest cropland. This was a farm — table-flat and 314 acres — so coveted that it drew three times the usual land-sale crowd. "They ain't making any more of this, boys," auctioneer Rich Vander Werff barked into a microphone, his voice slicing through...

Gov. Pat Quinn will deliver an election-year budget plan Wednesday that's fraught with politically perilous choices for ruling Democrats - primarily whether to extend the income tax increase set to expire in 2015 or make deep cuts in programs dear to some voters. But those may not be the only choices available to Quinn, who could chart a middle course that will carry the debate through the 2014 election. The governor postponed his budget speech until after...

The income gap between black and white families has grown, says a new study that tracked the incomes of 2,300 families for more than 30 years. Incomes have increased among both black and white families in the past three decades -- mainly because more women are in the work force. But the increase was greater among whites, according to the study being released Tuesday. One reason for the growing disparity: Incomes among black men have actually declined in the past three...

Like most Americans, I love nothing more than curling up in my favorite chair with a warm cup of coffee and a copy of the latest Congressional Budget Office report. That's just what I did when I got hold of the CBO's recent take on the hot topic du jour: the federal minimum wage. In case you haven't noticed from the loud and largely inaccurate yelling coming from both sides of the political aisle, the minimum wage has become something of a big issue. President Barack Obama...

After years of working to rid themselves of debt, Veronica Haven and her husband are no closer to owning a home. The family can't find much for the $200,000 loan the young couple qualifies for, Haven said. Even if they did find a house, mortgage payments would be uncomfortably high. "The housing prices are too high," the 23-year-old mother said. "No matter what we do, we get stuck." More and more, people have to stretch themselves financially to buy a home, said Robert...

MILFORD, Connecticut (Reuters) - Connecticut's Democratic governor, Dannel Malloy, on Tuesday called for the state to raise its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, matching President Barack Obama's call last month to raise the national minimum to that level. The hike, from a current $8.70, would take effect in three years and push Connecticut's minimum wage higher than in any other U.S. state, including Washington, where the current minimum is $9.32, the highest in...

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke finishes his opening statement before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats now in control of the committee say, in the words of Peggy Lee, "Is that all there is?" Commentators in the financial markets do not expect much news from Bernanke's semiannual monetary policy report to Congress. He will bang the drum slowly on behalf of fighting inflation and portray a resilient U.S. economy. ...

(David Dante Troutt is a law professor at Rutgers Law School-Newark, where he is director of the Center on Law in Metropolitan Equity. The opinions expressed are his own.) By David Dante Troutt Feb 3 (Reuters) - For the second year in a row, the issue of economic inequality was featured in President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address. Even some Republican lawmakers have now dared to speak the "i-word. " Though Obama predictably avoided comparisons between the...

`Let them buy stock." Or so Marie Antoinette might have declared last week, had the late and unlamented French queen spotted the irony dripping from last week's business pages. On one hand, the Dow Jones Industrial Average roared past the milestone 5000 mark on Tuesday, not even pausing before closing the week at a breathtaking 5048. Analysts said part of the Dow's push was provided by Caterpillar Inc., whose stock price surged on news that strikers at Illinois' largest industrial company are expected to cave...

CAPE TOWN, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Rising income inequality in the United States and South Africa threatens to tear their societies apart, rocker Bruce Springsteen said on Sunday before his first performance in Africa for almost three decades. Riding high on the global charts with his latest album "High Hopes", the musician stayed true to his New Jersey working class roots and socially conscious lyrics when answering media questions. "There is a tremendous problem...

I can use only one word to describe Paul Buchheit's premise ("Progressive tax is the fair solution") as he argues for higher taxes to make everyone better off: balderdash. The idea that government can engineer fair social outcomes by punishing productive members of society is as old as it is misguided. Instead of taking pride in the fact living standards are at their highest level in history, so-called progressives lament that government does not take enough money from the highest earners...

The Bottle Rockets made most mainstream music seem out of touch with reality Friday at a sold-out Hideout. Rejecting the self-importance, extravagance and entitlement embraced by contemporary stars, the band played slice-of-life songs about ordinary people lost in the fringes of society. Arriving at a time when the income gap between the rich and poor is the widest in America since the Great Depression, the blue-collar narratives came across with striking relevance and gutsy...

Not long ago, rich and poor Americans were getting richer and families could afford a nice home, car, appliances and other things that made life easier. But in the early 1970s, the economy and family incomes began to stagnate. The gap between rich and poor began to widen as the rich got richer faster than the poor. Now, with the push in Washington to cut spending and taxes, income inequality could worsen. The widening income gap is being caused by powerful forces: a slowdown in...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Female doctors earn an average of $56,000 less each year than male doctors, according to a new study, which found that gap hasn't budged since the late 1980s. Researchers used a nationally-representative survey conducted in 1987 through 2010 and found that although earning gaps shrank over time among non-healthcare workers, that was not the case for doctors and certain other health professionals. "There is something that's intrinsically going on...